About

$26,891

pledged of $10,000 goal

565

backers

Privly - the Solution to Privacy on the Internet

We are Computer Science PhD candidates with an idea we are calling Privly-- a general solution to privacy across the web. In short, Privly allows you to seamlessly view and post encrypted content on any website. Read our story in The Atlantic.

How does this work

Privly extends your browser to look for specially formatted links that point to your private data. When Privly finds the special links, it places the linked content onto the page you are viewing. No one between you and the person posting the content can read the content.

BenefitsWith Privly, you can:

Maintain control of your content wherever you post it

Delete emails after you send them (no more send regret)

Share content across social networks, email, blogs, and forums using the same privacy settings

Prevent governments from shutting down free speech

Prevent companies from selling and scanning your most private communications

Why are we building it?We love gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and every other communication medium, but we hate handing over rights to our most personal and important communications. Privly is our solution for people who want to use the newest social networks, but still care about privacy. We also want to protect free-speech from regimes that are trying to limit the internet.

Who are weWe are a group of Computer Scientists at Oregon State University. Our research is in machine learning and software engineering, but Privly is our passion project, not our research. Without donations we have to work on the project only on nights and weekends. Sean McGregorBalaji AthreyaJesse Hostetler (No linkedIn account, he is a Machine Learning researcher)Swetal PatelRead more about the Privly people.

How Far Along is the Project?We have implemented viewing and posting capabilities for Firefox, but do not have an encryption library in place to ensure complete privacy and security. If we meet our fundraising goal, we will build an open source encryption library for Privly-type extensions. If we beat our fundraising goal, then we will be able to pull a few more items off the roadmapWhy do we need money?Every donation to Privly serves as a validation of the Privly concept and brings the attention of open source developers. The Privly team is not big enough to build extensions for every platform on the market, but we can facilitate a community of Privly applications. Our fundraising goal will allow us to take a break from graduate school so we can focus on developing encryption libraries for use in a community of applications. In short, a donation means we publish an encryption library for everyone to use, and encourages the formation of a developer community.

Our Promise: Privly will remain an open source project dedicated to making privacy easy and automatic, anywhere on the internet.Want more info? Check out https://priv.ly. We have public prototypes for Firefox and Chrome.